44 INTRODUCTION. 



or, as Ray more quaintly styled it, tin- making of things to 

 uses, that we obtain more decided chances of attaining to 

 perfection in our systematic classifications. But \ve are en- 

 abled to do more than this. Natural History is not a mere 

 science of system and names; we have living objects for onr 

 study. The student must, however, guard against both ex- 

 tremes. It is as erroneous to consider that person a true 

 naturalist who contents himself with giving a series of hard 

 names to a collection of dried insects or other objects, as it 

 is to assert "that any person, with a little care, may become 

 a tolerably good naturalist the first walk he takes in the fields, 

 without much knowledge of books." 



To observe well the habits and economy of animals, to 

 notice, by the assistance of anatomical examination, the 

 adaptation of structure dependent upon such habits, to study 

 the writings of our predecessors who have pursued a similar 

 mode of research, and to apply the information thus obtained 

 to the discovery, not only of the systematic name, and the 

 relationships, more or less remote, existing between the va- 

 rious species of animals, with reference to their arrangement 

 in a natural system*, but also of their relationship with 

 nature in general, the weight of each in the great scale of 

 the universe, and the mutual dependence of animals or 

 plants upon each other, which constitutes that mighty whole 

 which St. Pierre has so well termed the harmony of nature : 

 this it is which constitutes a knowledge of nature, and he, 



* Some writers have either wilfully or ipnorantly confounded the mere 

 methodical classification of animals, i. e., their system of names, with 

 the natural system, than which no two things can he wider apart. Thus, 

 in the former, that classification must be the best by which we are en- 

 abled with the least labour to arrive at the name of an animal ; whereas 

 perfection in the latter can only result from a knowledge and adoption 

 of the numerous and intricate relationships existing: amongst animals, 

 whether of affinity (that close relation cxi-tin::, tor instance, between a 



hive I and a humble bee), or that more remote relationrOiip termed 



analogy, of which an inManee may be mentioned in the hornet, the hor- 

 net sphinx, and hornet asilus. 



